Value Adding Patterns in Product Deployment across Life Stages

Consumer products are deployed from market-in stage through growing-up stage to maturated stage by gradually shifting their appealing features from fundamental functions to supplemental value-addition over their life stages. This paper investigates the underlying design patterns in such product deployment toward revealing design knowledge with wider and longer visions. After the analysis procedure is organized by combining quality function deployment (QFD), cost-and-worth assessment in value engineering and cost estimation methods, design changes across three different vacuum cleaners for Japanese market in the last three decades are investigated as an example case. The gotten empirical results indicate the possibility in articulating design knowledge for efficient product definition toward design deployment across life stages.